How Microsoft builds its fast and reliable global network

Description

Every day, customers around the world connect to Microsoft Azure, Bing, Dynamics 365, Office 365, OneDrive, Xbox—and many other services—through trillions of requests. These requests are for diverse types of data such as enterprise cloud applications and email, VOIP, streaming video, IoT, search, and cloud storage.

Customers expect instant responsiveness and reliability from our services. The Microsoft global wide-area network (WAN) plays an important part in delivering a great cloud service experience. Connecting hundreds of datacenters in 38 regions around the world, our global network offers near-perfect availability, high capacity, and the flexibility to respond to unpredictable demand spikes.

As we build, expand, and run this world-class network, we rely on three guiding principles:

* Be as close as possible to our customers for optimal latency.

* Stay in control of capacity and resiliency to guarantee that the network can survive multiple failures.